GDNet: Weekly Sitrep

Thursday again...

LOGIN

Well, I got to be home for the weekend and then Monday morning I flew out to Seattle to attend LOGIN, formerly known as ION, formerly known as OGDC. Yea, they've been litigated out of their conference names for the past two years and even though they've had success with this one, they've still managed to get some trademark backlash for being partners with ChinaJoy (who is being chased after by Think Services with a cease-and-desist for their China Game Developers Conference (CGDC) label). They can't catch a break I guess!

Anyways the conference has been great so far, as always. It's a very small conference with only a few hundred people attending, so it's nice to know that every year I'll see all the people I know who will be attending - unlike GDC where some of my friends I just happen to see walking between sessions and exchange a quick wave. And that's it. Here at LOGIN we have 30 minutes between sessions, which is plenty of time to see people between talks and actually have a real conversation with them as well. The food is always the best at any conference I've ever been to, because it's always catered from the hotel and never in the boxes you get at GDC and such. Most of the times it's even too fancy for me to eat :P

A few little annoyances this year though. Because of some fiasco with Pepsi last year, they didn't re-sign and therefore they have no soda at all at the conference, just coffee and tea. Blech. Luckily the hotel has a cafe next to the lobby. The other thing is that, ironically, there is no internet service available for the conference. The hotel has an internet node, and you can actually sign up for a free day, but the conference wireless node is not active. This meant I was unable to live-tweet any sessions, which sucks because a lot of them I won't be writing up, but could have tweeted some little useful factoids. I took notes though.

Weather's been awesome - the rain stayed off until this afternoon and it's only a $6-7 cab ride to the hotel from my hotel anyways, and I have an umbrella if the rain isn't too bad it's an easy 6-block walk. But besides the rain today (and tomorrow?) the weather's been great, if a bit chilly. The view over Puget Sound was awesome on Monday - I could easily see the snow-capped Canadian mountains way off in the distance. It was austere. Today walking down to the conference the mountain was out - which is what Seattle residents say to refer to Mt Rainer, because the peak is obscured by clouds a lot of the time. So that was nice because it's a real cool sight. Tuesday had some crystal clear moments as well.

Thursday is the last day, then I fly home that night on the red-eye back to Jersey. It's been fun as always, I got to see some of my Seattle game dev friends for dinner at a Sake house Tues night. That was some delish sushi and Sake. Might be seeing one more Thurs night before I fly out. Hopefully LOGIN is back next year!

IGC East coverage

I moved my official IGC East coverage to next week. I don't know why I always think I can get extra work done while I'm at conferences. There's just no way! I'm at too many parties talking to people after hours, and that's one of the most important things to do at conferences so I can't just give that up.

Ratings weirdness

I think I failed to mention back when I released my original moderator update report a few weeks ago that due to the removal of moderator rank from a number of recently active GDNet member accounts, the ratings across the entire site were affected. We didn't see this coming at all - in fact the mods themselves were confused for a little bit until we hypothesized what had happened. So if you noticed your rating drop (in some cases significantly) then rest assured you weren't the only one and no one totally rated you down.

I need sleep.